President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his spokesmen wanted to use as an example of the uselessness of transparency and the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (Inai), how there were requests for information for the purchase of paper bathroom for his house in the National Palace that is bought with public resources.
What López Obrador wanted to exemplify was the banality of citizen requests for transparency for even asking for an account of the toilet paper they use in the bathrooms of their residence.
What the tenant of the Palace confesses, for those who want to see it, is that with public resources López Obrador is even paid for toilet paper. Which is important when he repeats his argument that no one can earn more than the President.
Yes, only that the majority of public officials who have to earn less than him do not get paid for rent, electricity, water, cars, drivers, travel, guards, food, cooks, service home, surely clothes and shoes, and many more things, well… even toilet paper.
Transparency gets in the way when it exposes the falsehood of the public discourse of honesty, austerity and all that rectitude that is presumed as a political banner. And the time comes when it is not so easy to transfer to the opponents the faults of the regime, as indicated by the principles of propaganda.
The INAI has been a guarantee of a transparency that is obviously annoying to power, but even with this, the rulers must be the first to defend the prevalence of institutions like this.
This institute was created by Vicente Fox in 2002 to guarantee citizen access to public information. It was Enrique Peña Nieto who endowed this institute with autonomy and it was precisely the Peña Nieto regime one of the main ones exposed by the transparency of the INAI.
Thanks to this institute, public opinion had details of the most scandalous cases of the past six-year term: the so-called Master Scam, Odebrecht, the White House, the corruption of the Cuernavaca express crossing and not a few details of the disappearance of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa. .
These cases not only annihilated any popularity of the former president, but also served as a flag to end any electoral possibility for the PRI and elevate those who are in power today.
Today we have heard from the voice of the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López, that the ideal world for López Obrador is to keep the INAI inoperative. But beyond the line drawn by the head of Segob, the President has publicly despised the transparency institute.
And it is that the Inai has also exposed acts of alleged corruption of this regime: Segalmex, the Gray House and the relationship of José Ramón López Beltrán with Baker Huges and Pemex, the contracts with Pemex of cousin Felipa López Obrador, the direct assignment contracts from the National Migration Institute and many more.
The INAI should have the weight for Mexicans that the National Electoral Institute has, only that its value is diluted in the mediation of the media that make allegations of corruption.
